Elsevier

Environmental Science & Policy

Volume 112, October 2020, Pages 348-360
Environmental Science & Policy

The evolution of policy instruments used in water, land and environmental governances in Victoria, Australia from 1860–2016

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.06.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The evolution of policy instruments in land, water, and environmental governance from 1860 to 2016 in Victoria, Australia.

  • Four development stages were identified: reserve regime, authority regime, information regime, and integration regime.

  • Reflecting on policy instrument configurations helps explain policy setting and provide a basis for policy improvement.

Abstract

Debate continues regarding which policy instrument should be used to ensure land, water, and environmental governance that promotes the sustainability of social-ecological systems (SESs). Policy instruments and Social Ecological Systems have played important roles in the theoretical development of natural resource governance systems. They, however, have been considered in isolation from one another. This study aims to bridge between the two by interpreting policy instruments as rules of interaction in a social-ecological system. Specifically, a longitudinal study on Victorian Acts was conducted to understand how policy instruments for land, water, and environmental governances adopted from 1860 to 2016 worked in the governance of SESs. Through a content analysis of the Acts, we constructed a simple typology of the ways in which policy instruments manage components of SESs. This typology includes the reserve regime, authority regime, information regime and integration regime. The study shows the circumstances under which interactions among components of biophysical and social systems deserve attention as partial shapers of policy instruments. The present work can be used to understand, examine and reflect on policy instruments currently used for resource governance and to make strategic improvements that account for current conditions rather than adopting new policies without understanding the existing context.

Introduction

Water, land and the environment are key natural resources of a catchment social-ecological system (SES). Globally, over two thirds of catchment systems have been degraded due to human intervention. Urgent action is needed to enhance human capacities to govern these natural resources now and, in a future, dominated by socio-economic and climatic change. Resource governance is likely to continue to transform as it is influenced by changing biophysical condition (such as drought, salinity) and the evolving social political environment. For example, some important socio-political influences in Victoria, Australia (where our case study is conducted) have been the strengthening environmental movement, the Paterson reforms separating water policy from supply functions, and more recent COAG reform in Australia (Connell, 2011; Robin, 2013; Tisdell et al., 2002). The ongoing transformation is reflected in changes in legislation, policies and institutional arrangements. The history of the establishment of government agencies, such as Land Conservation Authority, Catchment Management Authorities and the change in the concepts of ‘natural’ water rights demonstrates that organizations and policies have changed considerably with time (Connell, 2011; Holley and Sinclair, 2018; Powell, 1989). Debate continues on which interventions for land, water, and environmental governance better promote the sustainability of catchment SESs (Ekstrom and Young, 2009; Folke et al., 2007; Mitchell, 2005).

The presence of governance to mediate interactions between biophysical and social systems is represented in policy instruments. The over-consumption of water resources, pollution of waterways, declines in aquatic ecosystems and many social issues such as conflicts of interest among resource users, imbalances or disparities in water allocation, and political tensions among regions are the consequences of policy instrument failures in shaping the behaviors of complex and dynamic human-environment interactions (Cooper and Crase, 2016; Dovers, 2000; Robison et al., 2014; van der Brugge et al., 2005; Wallis et al., 2013). The degradation of catchment ecological systems is the result of a failure of policy instruments to govern interactions between and among components of biophysical and social systems adequately (Dovers, 2000; Horne, 2012, 2013; Sewell et al., 1985; van der Brugge et al., 2005; Young, 2000). Previously, several attempts to classify and design policy instruments have been made which did not consider the contexts where they are implemented (Gunningham et al., 1998; Hood, 1983; Ripley, 1966). However, the choice of available policy instrument is constrained by the context. The same policy instrument, if used in one context, would not necessarily produce the same outcomes in a different context (Bressers and O’toole, 1998; Linder and Peters, 1989). Thus, these classifications do not help in understanding what enables successful resource governance – in particular, the way in which institutions modify existing policy instruments or create new policy instruments.

There have been increasing studies on policy instrument design to cope with these complex, dynamic and cross-cutting social-environmental issues. It is agreed that specific policy instruments are often targeted to particular problems and objectives (Hood, 1983; Howlett, 2009, 2010). Thus, there tend to be multiple policy instruments in play and, in practice, the accumulated instruments may be either compatible, complementary or counterproductive with one another, in terms of the objectives and targets of the whole system. It is also found that policy instruments are the product of government learning processes in coping with specific problems that have arisen over time and in adapting to changing conditions (Borrás and Edquist, 2013; Bressers and O’toole, 1998; Howlett, 2010; Landry and Varone, 2005; Linder and Peters, 1989). Policy instruments can gradually evolve with changing conditions and problems in an environment in which stability and change are bound together (Hill, 2013; Mahoney and Rueschemeyer, 2003). Depending on its genesis, each policy instrument has its own development pathway (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010). Thus, policy instruments are context specific. Policy instrument selection is dependent and driven by the situation involving multiple actors (Mukhtarov et al., 2015), and the precedence of past problem definition and past interventions by previous actors (Junginger, 2014). Understanding the effectiveness of these combined policy instruments requires a systemic and long-term investigation of the pathways through which current policy instrument have been developed from previous ones (Dovers, 2000; Ellis et al., 2016; Kallis, 2010; Ross and Connell, 2016; Underdal, 2012; van der Brugge et al., 2005; Xia and Pahl-Wostl, 2012). Finally, it has recently been argued that policy instruments do not work in isolation in SESs where they are applied, rather they interact together. The effectiveness of policy instruments depends on their acceptance and appropriateness to the surroundings: the biophysical and social systems (Blomquist et al., 2005; Flanagan et al., 2011; Howlett, 2009; Landry and Varone, 2005; Nickson and Vargas, 2002).

Meanwhile, a large and growing body of literature has investigated the governance of SESs in reference to adaptive governance (Folke et al., 2005; Koontz et al., 2015; Pahl-Wostl, 2007; Scholz and Stiftel, 2005), polycentric governance (Ostrom, 1990), collaborative governance (Fish et al., 2010), integrated management (Mitchell, 2005; Nathan et al., 2011), and policy integration (Briassoulis, 2004; Jordan and Lenschow, 2010). Nevertheless, there is still a lack of knowledge on how a policy instrument can be most effectively improved in the context of its relationships with other previous and existing policy instruments, and on the capacity of policy instruments to engage with, and respond to, dynamic problems and conditions in SES governances.

In this article, we aim to address this knowledge gap by using policy instruments as a rule of interaction in a social-ecological system for improving the sustainability of SESs. Specifically, a longitudinal study of policy instrument development for land, water and environmental governances in Victoria, Australia for 1860–2016 was conducted. Understanding the Victorian journey to manage the interaction among components of SES in land, water, and environmental governance has potential to provide useful lessons for other regions globally that are undergoing similar concerns in synergizing and optimizing their natural resources use.

Section snippets

Theoretical framework

A theoretical framework relating policy instruments to components of SESs for water, land, and environmental governances is given in Fig. 1. In the framework, the governance of SESs is represented by the configuration of policy instruments used to rule interactions occurring within and between bio-physical systems and social systems and in this case between and among resources (R1-n), resource users (Ru11 - Runn) and public infrastructure providers (PIP11-PIPnn). Here, public infrastructure

Policy instruments used for water governance

The Water Act, enacted over the period 1860s to 2016, is Victoria’s main statutory policy for water governance. This Act covered policy instruments that ruled interactions among water resources, water users and public infrastructure providers responsible for supply, distribution and conservation (see the supplementary material for the list of Acts). Over the past century these Acts have emphasized the use of six policy instruments for water governances. Four policy instruments are identified as

Discussion and conclusion

Coordinated, non-conflicting, and complementary policy instruments are required to address different problems in SESs. Policy instruments vary and have their own pathways (historically situated) aligned with the social learning process recognizing how a problem is related to a resource. In addition, change in policy instruments is more visible than change in the whole governance system. Therefore, policy instruments are used here to represent rules of interaction in the social-ecological system

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ratri Werdiningtyas: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft. Yongping Wei: Conceptualization, Validation, Writing - review & editing. Andrew W. Western: Validation, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the Commonwealth of Australia under the Australia Awards Scholarship and was partly supported through the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship Program (FT130100274).

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